yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Xoom General] dvdcatalyst:
Batman Begins on Xoom

A few days ago, someone mentioned to me that he/she usually uses the opening scene of Batman Begins to test different settings. Yesterday I converted the movie and watched it last night in order to see how my settings hold-up.

Attached to this posts are 2 screenshots (and a zip containing the 2 in case the forum-upload resizes them). One from the original source used, and the other one from a conversion using my Xoom HQ1 profile, set to play full-screen on the Xoom (custom resolution)

I specifically picked the flying-bat scene, because due to the activity on screen conversions tend to produce artifacts.

The movie plays smooth all the way through, and looks great in full-screen on the Xoom.
[Xoom General] ruinah:
I also have to give a nod to DVD Catalyst. I bought it earlier this week. For $10 it converts anything I throw at it in about 15 minutes. I have an i7 920, 6GB of Ram and fast HDD's but kind of a crappy DVD drive to rip from but it works great. I also have an original Droid 1 and I converted Office Space yesterday and watched some at lunch. So smooth, no need for additional video players from the market. I also have ipods and this program converts for those too. I have a trip next weekend and I already have spent the couple of minutes converting the movies I want to watch on the plane rides and hotel at night. This software cannot be easier. I do have one bug I see, not sure why it does it but will throw it out since dvd cat watches this thread. After conversion it asks ti hook up the Xoom. I do and then I get an error message about it wanting something in the A: drive. Obviously I haven't used a floppy in years nor do I even have a floppy in my pc, just wondering why it's bombing there? I hit cancel and then it takes me to the copy screen and no issues after that. Just thought I'd mention it in case maybe I am doing something wrong there or something in my config could be causing it. Look forward to future releases. Thanks!
[Xoom General] xlGmanlx:
Lets get these videos on torrents haha
[Xoom General] dvdcatalyst:
Thank you ruinah, I am glad you get quite a bit of enjoyment out of dvdcat. Nice specs to run it on. It should make good use the multiple cores of your i7. I'm still using an old core2duo, so things go a bit slower for me unfortunately.

I am aware of the bug. It has something to do with the file-transfer portion of the program and the dvd ejection process. I thought I had it fixed in 4.0.2.5, but there were a few people who mentioned it to me.

A few days ago, I released 4.0.2.6, which also still has the same bug. The 2 weeks I have my Xoom, I only spent my time on getting the settings just right to get the best quality video on the Xoom, and did not look into anything else for this release.

Thanks again for using dvdcat :)
[Xoom General] e.mote:
I don't want to be sour grapes, and let me first agree that the author isn't doing any overt selling of his wares, but since we're here on the basis of info sharing, then my suggestion for those looking for a suitable converter to look elsewhere.

I took the time to skim over DVD Cat's voluminous manual, and what I saw was disturbing. If the manual is accurate and the app is indeed transcoding straight from the DVD (as opposed to first ripping to hard drive and encoding from there), it will eventually destroy your optical drive (OD).

Your OD is a mechanical unit, and the constant spinning-up/down of the drive constitute drive wear. Each DVD you rip can take hours, during which the drive will spin up/down constantly. Take that and multiply by however many DVDs you have. Even if kept spinning constantly, the OD would be going for hours, and heat also is a contributor to drive failure.

Not to mention that transcoding straight from the DVD is significantly slower than from the HDD, simply because of said slow seek time per access.

There are other caveats I noted from the manual. One is the lack of any mention of inverse telecine (IVTC), only de-interlacing. While some film material can be forced to 24 (23.976) fps without IVTC, others require proper IVTC, else you'll be stuck with de-interlacing, which significantly reduces video quality.

I also look askance at the author's method of determining "best encode setting," which strikes me as more from a neophyte than one knowledgeable about video encoding. For one, any "bad" setting can be made to look good if you pump enough bits into the video. For another, it's very hard for regular users to discern bad encodes from good unless they know what to look for, especially if enough bits are used. Because x264 is a mature encoding engine, it will compensate for many bad settings.

For those looking for good video encoding tools, I suggest getting the DVDFab HD Decrypter here to rip,

http://www.dvdfab.com/free.htm

It's free, it will do Bluray rips, and it's constantly updated to address newer disc encryption methods.

Once you have the content ripped onto your HDD, then use any good transcoder to encode to an MP4/MKV. The crowd fav is Handbrake. Others may favor more advanced tools. DVDFab (the paid version) is one of many good choices.

These said, you are free to disagree. Disclaimer: I'm not associated with any of the mentioned commercial products. I use mainly commandline tools, like x264cli and AVISynth.
[Xoom General] dvdcatalyst:
Thanks e.mote

I completely understand your reasoning, but I think you are missing one thing.

DVD Catalyst is designed to make things quick and easy, and I continiously work on it to try and make it to be the best at that.

For many people here on XDA, it is possible to achieve better results, but looking at the large number of questions and setting-exchanges regarding other conversion tools such as Handbrake, this is not something the "average user" is either capable of, or even interested in.

Only a few days ago, someone on a different forum posted this about dvdcat:

Not something you would get with Handbrake/x264.

I build dvdcat to sit in the middle. I started because the conversion tools for the masses at the time (DVD to PocketPC, Pocket DVD Wizard and later Clone DVD Mobile) were too limited for my own needs.

I played with the more advanced solutions such as Handbrake, x264 and other commandline tools, and while it worked, it was a lot of hassle, but yes, it was possible to get better results on a per-video basis

With dvdcat I have to keep into account that it has to produce consistent results. You do it by hand/script, and make changes to your settings based on individual movies. For average users, they just want a simple, no-hassle system that simply works. Minor quality differences, slightly larger files, but, it works with 1 click, without having to spend an excessive amount of time on specific settings, or to use multiple programs to achieve the results.

Most of the people who use dvdcat use older systems (even less than the dual-core I use) so I have to keep in mind that it doesn't take too long. As you know, conversion speed is directly tied to the quality. The better the quality, the longer it takes.

To produce consistent results, supporting more than just a single device and a single source format, making sure that there are no sync issues, producing good looking video and making sure they don't have sync issues in a 1-click solution is a bit different than doing multiple testruns with a conversion tool that gives you more power.

All of my direct competitors (including the forum-spammers you run into every now and then) sell for $40-$60, offer less functionality, produce worse quality and are often slower.

I didn't address the "Optical Drive" portion you mentioned.

Yes, dvdcat converts from the drive directly, but does this on a consistent speed. This is no different than using a DVD ripper such as DVDfab to rip the same DVD using the same drive.

True, DVDfab does it a little faster, because no transcoding is involved, however, in most cases, dvdcat still exceeds the actual playback speed of the DVD, so the "damage" done is similar to that of actually playing the DVD on your system.

Maybe just download the trial version, and give it a shot for yourself?
[Xoom General] inrelief:
I've 'thanked' both dvdcat and e.mote so far.

While you two are clearly in disagreement, the dialogue you two are having is good for the board.
[Xoom General] dvdcatalyst:
:)

I'm not sure if disagreement is the correct wording. Misconception might be more accurate.

There is a big difference between 1-click solutions and full-power solutions, and with dvdcat I try to combine the best of both.

The big thing I disagree with is the "optical drive" issue though. I've been doing this since 2004, and while I have a few hardware issues regarding optical drives, would you expect any different when you are running 10+ dvd conversions a day for 7 years?
[Xoom General] inrelief:
@dvdcatalyst -- by 'disagreement' I was referring to whether the 'best' fit is a power-user solution (HB) or the 1 click solution (your s/w).

Nothing wrong with multiple options, that's for sure.
[Xoom General] e.mote:
@DVDCatalyst

I'm disappointed that your reply didn't refute anything I've said, in particular, the rip-from-DVD and no-IVTC issues. No claim of "noob-friendly" can justify these egregious faults.

Every commercial video converter claims to be user-friendly, and yours is no different. Indeed, most are, requiring little user knowledge aside from selecting the proper preset. But most don't harm the hardware as yours apparently does, and many are capable of IVTC. These are independent from being user friendly. It's not an either-or situation.

>All of my direct competitors (including the forum-spammers you run into every now and then) sell for $40-$60, offer less functionality, produce worse quality and are often slower.

You are reaching with the "worse quality" claim. Since DVDCat can't do IVTC, and given your predilection of using improper settings (if your Xoom preset is an indication), I think the opposite is true. We both know that speed is irrelevant as a comparison tool, given that x264 is capable of various speed settings (by disabling features, at the cost of size efficiency).

If you care about your product's quality, then I suggest you improve it. Not encoding on-the-fly from the ODD should be an easy fix. Implementing proper auto-IVTC is more involved. It'd probably mean extending your horizon beyond the mencoder/mplayer base.

There are other issues as well, such as handling of variable framerates (VFR), that I don't see mentioned. If the manual reflects your current knowledge level, e.g. "2-pass is better than 1-pass", then I think some remedial knowledge acquisition wouldn't be a bad idea.

Edit (to your edit of encoding from DVD): Disagree. Playing a movie from the ODD is mostly a linear process. With buffering, drive is accessed fairly infrequently. Encoding from same drive, especially with decryption being on-the-fly, is at least partially random-access. Buffering can't be done, and much higher stress is placed on the drive head for constant seeks.

Yes, it's possible, and mencoder allows it. However, it's not recommended by any ripper/encoder I know of, even if common sense has gone AWOL.
[Xoom General] dvdcatalyst:
@e.mote

Well, I guess that no matter what I say or do is going to please you.

I knew that by signing up as a commercial developer on these forums to answer questions about my software in order to help people out I would run into someone like you, but your responses clearly show an animosity towards me for some reason.

The direct-from-dvd issue you have with my s/w, resulting in hardware issues is unfounded. Yes, I had a few DVD drives fail, but as a developer my DVD drives run 15 hours a day. Converting a DVD at a speed similar to that of actual DVD playback or ripping it at the maximum speed the drive can handle (dvdfab), what do you really think is worse? On top of that, what about the thousands of users who use Handbrake in combination with AnyDVD, they are in the same boat as dvdcat users.

As for IVCT, sure, I'll play with it and incorporate it in one of the next updates.
[Xoom General] cwizardtx:
FWIW: Many "dvd to convenient portable format" applications are designed to let the end user take their dvd, dump it in a drive and then go. While I understand the relative merits to command line tools, I am starting to lose interest in this conversation because its turning into a "my way is better than your way" type argument when the simple fact of the matter is: To the end user, your way may not be how they want to do it.

Here's the other simple fact: To most end user, both methods will produce equally satisfying results. Only the experienced high end guy is going to care or be concerned about his DTB's and his QPV's not having an extra 0x1 byte at the end.

To your claim of rampant destruction of one's DVD drive while going straight from DVD I'll just toss in my own experience: If I want to decrypt a dvd with a tool like DVD fab or AnyDVD I still need to copy the disc off once... it takes about half an hour or more I guess... and THEN I can use the copy as my source for conversion yadda yadda. But when I use an application designed to do it in one shot... it seems to just take slightly longer, and does pretty much the same job.

My personal preference?

I like the solution that you gave with the script that you just drag and drop folders on to, it's pretty tight. I downloaded the GUI version of handbrake as well and like playing around with that.

But as someone without a ton of knowledge of the finer workings of these file formats and all these stupid options... is this argument producing anything positive at this point?
[Xoom General] ruinah:
I think we've hit sour grapes now. I will tell you my DVD drive is probably 5-6 years old by now. It's a cheap memorex 4x dvd writer, only rips at 12-16x. I've converted hundreds of dvd's over the time I have had it plus burned god know how many discs with it. I don't buy your notion that his software will ruin your optical drive. I'm not sure why you are so negative with this product, obviously other like it for what it does. If you want to go use Handbrake and rip it other ways, that's your perogative and great you know how to do all those things. This guy is probably one of the most reponsive software creators I've dealt with. His product plain works (for me at least), I guarantee my parents could figure this out and convert and copy a file to a device and they are complete novices. I just don't understand who you are to question his sw and what knowledge he has about video encoding. I gotta tell you, anything I convert works flawlessly on my devices. Not trying to start a flame war, I just don't get the negativity. I'm just happy to see a vendor support the Xoom this early in its release.
[Xoom General] e.mote:
@DVDcatalyst

Sorry you took my criticisms personally, as they aren't personal attacks. This is a technical forum, and all of my comments are strictly based on a technical footing.

Your "it's OK for me" reasoning isn't reasonable. Just because it's OK for you, doesn't mean that it doesn't harm the hardware. The reasons why, I've laid out, and you didn't refute. To say that others may be guilty of committing the same offense, doesn't make it any better.

Good to hear that you will try to implement IVTC. May I suggest also putting in one-pass constant-quality mode that's recommended by x264's dev himself? For x264, one-pass no longer means constant-quantizer (it was never constant-bitrate). It's both better quality and faster than the traditional 2-pass, and is just as bit-efficient. It's also more user-friendly, since a quality setting is more intuitive than selecting an arbitrary bitrate, given that different contents can require widely different bitrates, and there's no way to tell which bitrate is "best."

To hear it from the horse's mouth,

http://doom10.org/index.php?topic=267.0

@ruinah, et al

As said, you are free to disagree. I understand that people can have different opinions on the matter, and most will stick to what they found works for them.
[Xoom General] xlGmanlx:
@emote, for what its worth you come off like an @ss , it's one thing to provide suggestions but the dev is under no responsibility to adhere to them, you don't like it move along. There is a way to suggest improvements without coming off terse.
[Xoom General] e.mote:
I agree, jumping into a thread to say that XYZ app is deficient, when users of said app are proclaiming their love, is probably not the way to gain friends & win influence.

I fully understand the expected reactions. I don't make claims of my skills of social pleasantry or prowess of tact. I comment simply because I don't agree of what is claimed as "good." Now that that is said, I will indeed move along.
[Xoom General] dvdcatalyst:
In a recent version I included "backup" profiles that actually use Constant Quality.

For playback on devices, I don't use this as a default due to a large possibility of compatibility issues such as a "non-playable video" message or stutter-issues when a fast-action scene comes up. When Handbrake switched to CQ by default (which works great on iDevices) many people with Android phones (Droid 1 for example) were running into that.

The Xoom doesn't have this issue though.
[Xoom General] e.mote:
Bitrate fluctuations for 2-pass just as high as 1-pass CRF. In fact, they're identical. For bitrate-limited devices, the solution is to use vbv- settings, eg vbv-bufsize & vbv-maxrate.

http://mewiki.project357.com/wiki/X264_Settings#vbv-maxrate

Handbrake presets for older Apple devices are good examples of use.

This, plus limiting the encode to, say, x264's default of CRF 23, should solve most playback issues. IME, "stutters" often occur when users tried to play to play "warez" HD videos, which tend to have unduly high bitrates (most of them use 2-pass, BTW).
[Xoom General] cwizardtx:
Thanks for bringing the topic of conversation to a more mechanical level guys, I really do enjoy the information that is exposed at this level of intellect.

e.Mote I would especially be interested in more command line stuff. Is there a way with handbreak to force cropping of movies so they show up full screen (its still widescreen but i expect to lose some data).

I'm interested in ripping movies a couple different ways :)
[Xoom General] ruinah:
apparently you know a lot about video processing - great. You don't need to attack someone's software though to get your point across. Making suggestions of how to make the software better though can be done without saying it's worthless and harms people's machines (I still think your statement is ludicrous there) and help the developer make a better software.

I am interested also from a technical side of things in some of these discussions. Just keep it civil and talk about how to improve things and why the suggestion would make an improvement.

Also, if you know so much about video processing why not make your own software?
[Xoom General] android_geoff:
hey Dvdcat thanks for the update! Havent been on the board in awhile and i just saw the new presets!

In regards to e.mote why couldnt your so called banter be in a private message?

I started the thread because its literally a

- load dvd

- click desired vxoom preset

- click go

Isnt that why the apple products are so popular? Because theyre easy to use!

Dvdcat's only here to help people with questions and i cant think of any other developer ive dealt with in the past like him
[Xoom General] dvdcatalyst:
You are welcome Geoff, I love them myself too, the new profiles make the old ones I had outdated :)

On a side-note,

While I was working on 4.0.3 Beta 2 (aka the bluray update) I had someone test the new Xoom profiles on an iPad2, and they work great on that as well.

The only thing to remember is that if you are converting HD content, make sure you change the resolution to 1280x720. The one set in the Xoom profiles is a little higher than that in order to make it possible to make your videos full-screen (taking the permanent menubar into acount) but the iPad2 will not accept files of a higher resolution than 720p.

I am updating the profiles as I type this, and if all goes well, I'll release Beta2 tomorrow. Besides Bluray, the beta also works better with newer MKV files.

(important, while DVDs work directly, for Bluray to work, you will need AnyDVD HD or DVDfab Passkey)
[Xoom General] e.mote:
@cwizardtx

>Is there a way with handbreak to force cropping of movies so they show up full screen

Historical trivia: If anybody still remember from the 4:3 CRT days, this cropping feature used to be called pan-&-scan (P&S). It was doable for when movies were still 16:9 aspect-ratio (or 1.78 AR). Then, 2.35 AR flicks become the vogue, and 4:3 CRTs went the way of the dodo, so P&S also went out of fashion, and letterboxing became the norm.

Anyway, no, HB can't do it by itself, but you can do it with some help from HandBrakeCLI. Hope you don't mind some math.

Run handbrakecli to scan the dvd folder, and dump info into a file,

handbrakecli -i "path\dvd_folder" -t 0 2> "path\scan_dump.txt"

You need the resolution, autocrop parameters, pixel AR (PAR), and display (AR) for the desired title. The relevant lines in scan_dump.txt would be (for Matrix PAL DVD),

+ title 1:

+ Main Feature

...

+ size: 720x576, pixel aspect: 64/45, display aspect: 1.78, 25.000 fps

+ autocrop: 76/76/0/0

Cropped resolution = orig resolution - autocrop = 720 x (576-76-76) = 720x424

Assuming you want to do a "dumb crop", i.e. simply chopping off the sides to make it fit into 16:9 (1.78) AR, then we take the height as given, and calc the truncated width

trunc_W = cropped_H * desired_AR / pixel_AR = 424 * (16/9) / (64/45) = 530

So, truncated resolution will be 530x424 (anamorphic). Upon display this will be expanded out to 530 * pixel_AR = 530 * (64/45) = 754 width, or 754x424 res, which is 16:9 AR.

Then, final resolution is 530x424. You can set this directly in Handbrake GUI, or if HandbrakeCLI, use -w and -l params. Make sure either --strict-anamorphic or --loose-anamorphic (per your preference) is enabled.

Yeah, I know this looks severely geeked. But in a script, it's just a single drag-drop.

BTW, I mention this as a "dumb crop" because it's not a good way to crop. To understand why, calc the image loss,

image loss = (orig_cropped_W - trunc_W) / orig_cropped_W = (720 - 530) / 720 = 26%

26% lost is a lot. It's OK when the action is relative centered on the screen, but for wide-open action scenes that go side-to-side, it can look much worse than letterboxing. A better method is what I call "smart resize", which is a combo of three things, (vertical) letterboxing, (horizontal) cropping, and a bit of AR squishing. Max image loss using this combined approach was minimal, about 10%.

Anyway, probably more than you asked for. The reason for all this brain dump is that I wrote a "smart resize" script function (using x264, not HB) a while ago, and all this is from recollection. Then, I found that I never used it, so I dumped the code. Roughly, the algo is that you do a linear interpolation between the device AR and movie AR, to arrive at a "resized" AR, which takes into account all three actions.

@ruinah

Per my pledge, I'll no longer address the DVDCat software. I've said all I wanted to say on that matter. You are welcome to your interpretation of my comments.
[Xoom General] cwizardtx:
He hasn't made his own software per se but he actually has his own contribution on another thread where he has a zipped package with handbrake cli and a script that allows you to just drop a TS_VIDEO folder right onto it, and poof.. an hour later you have a XOOM perfect .mp4 ready to go. I am thoroughly enjoying both sides of this conversation :)
[Xoom General] cwizardtx:
Thanks alot, and I probably wouldn't do it often either. Just interested and will continue to follow any developments you make on your script.

I'm more or less interested in that "perfect rip" script.